LETTER: "Move Over" Law Potentially Dangerous

If you can stand one more letter related to the law that you must move to the left lane if there is a police car in the breakdown lane, I have a concern about it.

I have been aware of the law for some time now, having seen a couple of articles in the news about it, and one thing has bothered me since I first heard of it.

What are you supposed to do if traffic is heavy and the left lane is full? If you try to force your way in, it is unlikely that anyone will willingly grant you an opening. If you push the issue, you will either cause a crash or possibly a road rage incident. At best you will get a lot of horn-blowing and one-finger salutes.

If you cannot move over, you have only two options that I can think of. One, pull over into the breakdown land and wait til the police car moves. This would be impractical and possibly illegal. The other would be to just go by in the right lane and hope that there would be a lot of other people doing it for the same reason and the officer would not do anything because there would be too many cars to deal with.

This law closes down the right lane at a moment's notice. When a lane closure is done for other purposes such as construction, lighted signs, arrows and those orange pylons are set up well in advance. In my opinion, this law shifts the danger from the officer to the rest of us. I would not be surprised if it causes serious accidents as it stands. I consider this law to be dangerous and difficult to comply with during periods of heavy traffic. Clarence Bradshaw, Bristol